A late homosexuality induced by a very tragic experience. Naturally the man was always latently homosexual. But it was that experience which turned him into a manifest homosexual. Unfortunately I am unable to state whether he married the woman and became heterosexual again or not, because I never saw him after that.
The reader will observe that in this chapter I have quoted quite a number of cases culled from the reports of other practitioners. I do this for a double reason. First, I want to prove, on the basis of other material than my own, that homosexuality has its psychogenesis; and, in the second place, I aim by this means to disprove the contention unfortunately rather widespread in some circles and actually expressed by some critics, that my case histories correspond to the “genius loci.” As if the Viennese differed in sexual matters from the North-German or from the Englishman! My material is derived from the world at large. I have been unable to discover thus far any difference with respect to sexual matters between any two nations, except that one may keep things under cover more cleverly than the other.
This series of cases aiming to illustrate the rôle of psychic trauma in sexuality may be concluded with the following case, reported by Pfister (l. c. p. 169):
A 28-year-old woman, member of an educational institution, of high moral repute, is in despair because she fears she is no longer able to control her homosexual longings. If she meets a young girl she is nearly overpowered with the impulse to kiss her then and there. The unknown girl’s face haunts her for weeks afterwards and she can not sleep tortured with regret because she did not gratify her impulse to kiss the girl as she does with her acquaintances. She is particularly distracted at the thought that with her tendernesses and attentions, she may mislead into homosexual counter-affection a fourteen-year-old girl who is close to her, although nothing out of the way has happened between them. But the little friend already trembles with excitement when she is embraced and her great affection leads her to tears if she does not see her beloved often enough.
Our homosexual girl had a physically attractive but otherwise insignificant, nervous father who left the conduct of his business to the capable hands of his energetic and intelligent wife. The little daughter learned early to admire her mother and to look upon her father as a “light weight.” As a small girl she was normal. She played equally with boys and girls. With her playmates of both sexes she underwent various sexual experiences: the girls played the game of doctor and this gave them an opportunity to touch the sexual parts, and a small, ailing boy who was one of the girl’s playmates between her seventh and ninth years, did the same thing. Around the age of eight years she fell in love with an uncle who had the habit of throwing her playfully into the air, a game which always gave her a very peculiar feeling. At ten or eleven years of age a 40-year old housekeeper abused her repeatedly. Definitely homosexuality broke out when the girl was thirteen. She was at the time a great deal in the company of a teacher who resembled her mother in many ways but who was better educated. That passionate woman was distinctly homosexual and for two years she treated the girl with greatest affection. During that time her passion for kissing developed while the grossly sexual cravings which the sensuous housekeeper had roused in her gradually quieted down. A few love affairs with boys also led to kisses but she experienced no particular passion in that connection. Those affairs she took up as a pastime and to be in fashion rather than because she was interested.
At the boarding school her one-sided erotic inclination was further developed in the course of passionate friendships. At the age of nineteen she made a couple of heterosexual erotic attempts but they proved unsuccessful. The first affair was with a hot-blooded artist of womanly appearance. Her love was deep, the young girl floated in ideal conversations and gladly exchanged kisses with the young man. After his departure they maintained a warm correspondence full of tenderness but without giving one another any formal promise.
Five or six weeks after parting from the beloved friend she became engaged to a smart young man because she was in despair and she had given up the plan of a higher education for herself as she was not getting along at all well with a relative at home. She thought she loved her young man but soon after the engagement she began fearing that she had perhaps undertaken more than she intended to carry out. The soft, shy young man apparently resembled her father. For seven months she played at being in love, vomitted every morning and wished she were dead. Finally she gave up her engagement and concentrated all her feelings upon members of her own sex. She maintained however her delicate womanly sensitiveness throughout and always gave the impression of a girlish creature. So long as she found homosexual gratification, she took little interests in a career, or in nature, art and religion; but as soon as her inclinations were thwarted, her ideal interests came strongly to the foreground. She herself compared these vacillations with the movements of a pair of scales.
When she felt deeply in love she was fairly free of grossly sexual excitations. But during her loveless engagement she felt herself sexually roused a number of times when the young man played with her in a thoroughly respectable manner.
Pfister then relates that the young woman interrupted the analysis just as she was making rapid progress towards recovery. But he adds a number of interesting details, including her first dream, which usually contains the nucleus of the neurosis.